Wednesday, March 24, 2010

This week Jamie asks, from what do I wish to take a break?
For your viewing pleasure, I've provided a visual answer, as well as a written one.

I wish to take a break from the spiritual chaos that messes me up, erodes me. I wish to take a break from that poisonous, vengeful spirit in society. Retribution renders us incapable to sooth the pain of violations and betrayal. Killing Sadam Hussein did nothing to soothe the pain of 9-11, did it? I tire of hearing how those who've inflicted pain must pay for what they did. Who made any of us judge and juror? Revenge seems to me a tyrannical thief of freedom and peace. And anger, a devil that wants to possess us.

I wish to take a break from the notion that forgiveness means weakness, or approval. I have the capacity to forgive ~ I see nothing as unforgiveable. I wish to take a break from a society that kills whatever it doesn't know, understand, approve. I wish to take a permanent break from fear. I wish to take a break from toxic lifestyle choices that make me sick, of body, of mind, of spirit. I wish to take a break from debilitating depression, and grief over painful losses. I wish to avoid becoming my limitations and frailties. I wish to take a break from anyone who perceives life through a quantitative lens of mutual exclusivity. Sharing with someone that has less than I will not diminish me. It will expand me.

I feel inspired to give ... and so here is a collection of desktop wallpapers I've put together. Don't forget to extract the zip file, once you've downloaded the zip file. I now have some of my fotografik prints for sale ... visit my shop ... spread the word.

Fear ... it makes us do crazy things. Definitely our society needs a break from all the fear-mongers ... i carefully choose what foods I put in my body, a reminder to watch what i let into my mind. thank you.

Couldn't agree more with your very well written entry and the first picture.Would also like to make usage of the chance and thank you very much for your supportive, thought provoking and always much appreaciated friendship&comments.Please have a nice Thursday.

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Welcome to Insanity

Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern. Just the slow erosion of the self, as insidious as any cancer. And, like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door. I realize that every person, at some point, takes up residence in one or another of these rooms. But that realization provides no relief from said hell.

It seems to me the basic definition of mental illness: a persistent, painful inability to simply be with someone else. It might be lifelong, or it might descend like a sudden catastrophe, this blankness between ourselves and the rest of the world. The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it's hell, a life lived behind glass.

Fear?

Distilling Life

I sometimes like to lose myself in the thought that I am merely a culmination of various chemical reactions occuring at the cellular level of my body. What directs these chemical reactions? Is that where individuality resides? When I consider pharmaceuticals and their effect, it can make sense - chemical reactions fueling existence. Perhaps the Seroquel XR I'm taking bridges some cellular, chemical gap or deficiency. The perceived effect being an insular stabilizing of my mood. Does it all seem a bit too simple? Can we really distill life down to a few chemical reactions?
I wonder. Perhaps, then, divinity resides within those chemical reactions?

Words of Wisdom

"Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year."~ David Eggers

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."~ Rumi

"If we do not transform our pain we will surely transmit it."~ Richard Rohr

"We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late."~ Marie Beynon Ray

“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”~ Leonard Cohen

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.~ Anais Nin

"All of us live in exile in a real way. As St. Paul puts it, we see as 'through a glass darkly,' through an enigma, separated always partially from God and each other."~ Ron Rolheiser, OMI

"Truth is shattered into a thousand pieces when God throws it down to earth."~Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

“The act of building is the physical tangible expression of promise.”~ Unknown

'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'~ Dorothea Lange

"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”~ Thomas Merton, Journal: October 2, 1958

“The authentic self is the soul made visible.”~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

"A diamond only shines after it's been cut."~ Danielle LaPorte

"Having a grievance is like drinking poison and thinking it will kill your enemy."~ Nelson Mandela

“The absence of fear is not courage. The absence of fear is some kind of brain damage.”~ M. Scott Peck

"Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life."~ Picasso

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."~ Thomas Merton

"Worry is like a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere."~ Unknown

"A photograph is a painting made by the eye, using light as the paintbrush."~ Roxanne Galpin

"The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood. Corn grows in the night."~ Henry David Thoreau

“The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”